Finders Keepers

By Ingrid Weaver

Reformed bad boy Jesse Koostra didn't think he'd miss much about Port Hope when he roared out of town on his Harley eight years ago. His dad was in prison. The family home was in shambles. And the town was swirling with rumors about his involvement in a crime he didn't commit.

Now Jesse's back, determined to cut the last ties to his troubled youth. Then he lays eyes on Brittany Barton, the girl–next–door who had enchanted him for most of his teenage years. Suddenly turning his back–and his bike–on his hometown again doesn't seem so appealing. And as past secrets begin to surface, Jesse is about to discover the true value of what he left behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781488740251

Ingrid Weaver

Ingrid Weaver is a USA Today bestselling author with more than 25 novels to her credit. She has written for several lines within Silhouette and Harlequin, and has also been published with Berkley/Jove. She has received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Romantic Suspense and the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award. She currently resides on a farm near Frankford, Ontario, Canada.

Book preview

Chapter One

It was the Harley she noticed first. A bike like that was hard to miss in a sleepy, small town like Port Hope, Ontario. Sunlight flashed from the chrome, momentarily blinding Brittany Barton as she carried two orders of fries to the teenage girls at the front table. She squinted through the window. Several adolescent boys had noticed the bike, too. They clustered on the curb, trying to act cool as they postured for the girls who pretended not to be watching them.

What was it about a motorcycle, especially an in-your-face, old-school machine like a Harley-Davidson, that conjured up images of rebellion and adventure? Even a twenty-four-year-old woman who had been there, done that, and should know better wasn’t immune to the mystique, that lure of the open road. Brittany hated the way her pulse danced, and her breathing wasn’t quite steady, because of course it wasn’t the bike she reacted to, it was the memory of a particular boy who used to ride one.

It had been nearly eight years since she had seen Jesse Koostra. He’d been everything her mother had warned her about, the quintessential bad boy: tall, tough and wickedly handsome. He had a voice as sensual as dark chocolate that fuelled her dreams like the rumble of his Harley.

Countless summer nights she would lie awake in her bedroom under the eaves, restless and sweaty, listening to the crickets and the hum of mosquitoes on the screen while she waited to hear the distinctive echo of the engine as Jesse made his way home. His family lived a mile down the road from the Barton farm on a piece of land that was mostly swamp. Their yard and barns were crammed with vehicles in various states of disrepair. Old, rusted-out cars seemed to be the only crop his father raised. As for Jesse and his sister, they were allowed to grow wild.

Brittany had longed to be free like them, but she hadn’t had the nerve. Instead, she dutifully did her homework, weeded the garden and tended the chickens. She tried her best to live up to everyone’s expectations, all the while secretly yearning for the next time she would see Jesse.

Pathetic, wasn’t it? What was worse, the unrequited crush of her childhood years had so warped her mind that she later searched for a bad-boy like Jesse in every man she met.

Apparently, she was still doing it, because the longer she looked, the more it appeared as if the bike parked in front of the restaurant didn’t simply resemble Jesse’s, it was precisely like his, right down to the hand-painted wolf adorning the blue gas tank.

No. It couldn’t be his. He’d disappeared right after the trial.

The bell above the front entrance tinkled. Sunshine streamed past the man who stepped into the doorway, hiding his features in shadow.

But Brittany didn’t need to see his face. Her heart had already felt his presence.

Chapter Two

Hello-oo? The sing-song question came from one of the girls at the window table. It was followed by a quick succession